


The Last One

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 03:53:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5770258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor's arrived for another Wednesday outing, but he's a little later than he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last One

**Author's Note:**

> The plot itself is a little weak, but I needed something to help me deal with Clara's departure, and by extension, Eleven's, since they're one of my favourite TARDIS teams.
> 
> The Doctor arrives just after 'The Day of the Doctor' — Clara's been dealing with his regeneration in 'Deep Breath' for a week.

Giving the console a sharp tap, the Doctor frowned. There was something funny going on with it - before giving up and shutting off completely, one of the displays had been reading a date six months ahead of when he’d meant to arrive.

He bounded over to the door to stick his head outside. It was dark, but that only suggested he was a few hours late, not months. He glanced up at Clara’s floor, saw that her light was on, and smiled, heading back inside. She would see him; she would be here soon enough.

Seated on the other side of the console, he had to crane his neck around when the door opened. Beaming, he dropped his copy of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide’ and jumped up to greet her.

‘Clara! I know I’m a little late tonight, but it’s still Wednesday, I thought we could—’ But he stopped short at the sight of her face. Control freak though she was, it would still have been difficult to miss the brief flash of what might have been shock in her expression.

‘Clara?’ he asked, a little less enthusiastically this time. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

*

She had.

At the sound of the TARDIS materialising in front of her apartment block, her heart leapt — it had been a tough week, and she’d been wondering when the Doctor was going to show up again. The new, grey-haired version.

Picking up a coat, she dashed out the front door and down the steps, nearly tripping up at the bottom in the semi-darkness. She ran the few yards to the blue box and opened the door.

And there he was.

Not just the Doctor — _her_ Doctor. Of all of the faces she’d seen so far, this was the one she’d grown attached to. The one she might even have fallen in love with, floppy hair and protruding chin not-withstanding.

‘Late’ was something of an understatement. She hadn’t seen this face since — since he’d regenerated. Hadn’t heard from him since his call to reassure her that the _new_ face, the one that was old and lined with years, marked with loss, was still his. Still the Doctor.

But that had only been last week. After she’d sent him off to get coffee, she’d gone back to her regular life, burying herself in schoolwork so as to avoid an impossible truth: she was never going to see that lanky, bumbling young Doctor again. Experience told her that, yes, they were all still the Doctor, but they were also all different, in their words and their appearance and their behaviour.

His abrupt regeneration seemed to have brought on her old dreams. All week, she had been kept awake by dreams of danger and death which she knew were not really dreams, but slivers of her other selves. The last thing she needed was this face appearing again, as if taunting her.

‘Clara? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ Hearing his voice come out of that mouth almost made her take a step backwards in shock.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. This couldn’t be real. It was a trick, a trap, it had to be. 

She carefully rearranged her facial expression, and the Doctor seemed to take this denial as an answer to his query. Her mind raced through the possibilities, but the only plan she seemed to be able to land on was to play the fool and go along with whatever this was, if she wanted to know why it was happening. 

*

The Doctor accepted her response without question, but as he moved back to the console he resolved to keep an eye on her. After all the years he’d spent travelling with humans, he knew perfectly well when something was bothering them, even if Clara was a tricky friend to read. 

But when he looked back up at her, hand on a lever, her whole demeanour had returned to her usual ‘Wednesday adventure’ look, and that threw him off more than her earlier display of emotion. What was going on? Distracted, he started up the TARDIS, pulling on a huge grin.

‘Well then, I thought we could go somewhere fun — have you ever met Jane Austen? Lovely woman, she was on my pub quiz team once, we won by a landslide. Literally.’

‘ _You_ know Jane Austen?’ asked Clara, slipping along the floor towards him as the TARDIS took flight.

‘Course I do, who do you think introduced her to Mr Darcy?’

‘Didn’t pick you for much of a ‘Pride and Prejudice’ fan.’ In response, the Doctor held out his arm with a smirk, indicating the door, and once the shaking stopped, Clara moved to open it. Before following, the Doctor pulled the monitor towards him for a final check — and the grin slid right off his face.

‘Clara, wait!’ But it was too late. She’d already opened the door, and all he could see behind it was a deep blackness, punctuated in places by a disturbingly small amount of stars.

* 

They weren’t in England, that much was clear. Clara didn’t need to be told to shut the door — the endless void beyond creeped her out. Something was very obviously wrong, and now the plan seemed to be falling into place. She was, essentially, trapped in with a man who looked like the Doctor, but who couldn’t _possibly_ be. 

Briefly, a rational voice inside her head shouted that it could just be a mistake. The Doctor was certainly prone to such things. But it was quickly extinguished by Clara’s certainly that he must surely _know_ he’d arrived too late. And if he’d done it by accident, why couldn’t he, then, have done it on purpose, explain to her in person of his regeneration, rather than phoning ahead?

His voice dragged her out of her confusion.

‘Right, we’re ok, we can get out of this one,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Let’s go, come on, come on!’ As he spoke, he dashed around the console, pleading with whatever forces were now at work.

Clara honestly didn’t know what to make of it, but before she could consider, the lights went out, and the cloister bell echoed through the darkness.

‘Alright,’ said the Doctor, a little louder this time, ‘nobody panic, it’s inside. But we’re alright, it feeds on fear, and uncertainty, and distrust— focus on the TARDIS, Clara, she’s going to get us out of this.’ Clara’s grip tightened on the railing as a wave of cold swept over her, threatening to overwhelm her.

‘What is this, what’s going on?’ she whispered, forgetting which Doctor she was speaking to.

‘The only name people have for it is the Sinister. It’s — they’re not _alive_ , really, not in the way we understand life. But it exists out here, no one’s supposed to be out this deep in space, there’s a reason you couldn’t see many stars, nothing survives for very long in its presence, not even dark matter. We’ll be ok, though, _they_ can’t survive in the absence of darkness.’

Clara only had time to think about what a simple flaw that was in an apparent predator when she gasped suddenly, clutching her forehead, and fell to her knees.

‘Clara!’ He ran over to her, trying to catch her. ‘Clara, listen to me, you have to trust me, forget about what I said, I shouldn’t have said it—’ But she wasn’t listening to him. The dreams, the nightmares that had plagued her over the last week were suddenly, vividly real.

‘I am - _Oswin_ , I am human…’

‘Clara Oswald, my impossible girl, _listen to me!_ ’ She was vaguely aware of the Doctor trying to help her back into a standing position, reaching out with another hand to try and pull a lever on the console. 

‘Clara, it feeds on fear, you need to trust that we’re going to get out of this, it can’t hurt you!’ But he was fading. There was a Dalek eyestalk protruding from her head now. The TARDIS was gone. She was trapped, alone, being shouted at by a Time Lord who shouldn’t even exist in that form any more.

‘I am _not_ a Dalek!’

‘Clara please, you have to trust me!’ Trust? Trust a dead man?

‘You’re _dead_!’ she screamed. She was crying now, tears blurring the edges of the dream state that seemed so very real to her. ‘You regenerated!’ 

The Dalek chorus reached a crescendo inside her head, and she blacked out without seeing the shock register on the Doctor’s face.

*

Struggling to keep her upright, the Doctor grabbed hold of the console, hardly paying attention to what buttons he was pressing. They had to get _out_ of here — they had to get rid of the thing encroaching on Clara’s consciousness.

‘Clara Oswald, my impossible girl, _listen to me!_ ’ He was losing her, and fast. The last time she’d said anything like that, they were trapped on the Dalek asylum. But that wasn’t even her, she shouldn’t remember that.

Why, why had he gotten distracted? Why couldn’t he just focus on the adventures they were going to have?

Why did he have to _care_ so much?

And then she screamed at him. By all rights, she should have been unconscious by then. There was clearly something bothering her, and the Sinister had circled in on that like vultures, dragging her down. But she was strong — strong enough to shout what had been on her mind since she’d entered the TARDIS.

There wasn’t time to focus on that, however, even if the revelation was clawing at his insides. The Doctor lifted her limp form up to the console, placing her hands on the telepathic circuit. All he could think about was the way the Sinister were now dragging out Clara’s worst nightmares, pulling apart her brain in the most painful way imaginable.

'Please…'

*

Clara awoke with a start, wetness still tracing tear tracks down her face. For a moment she felt safe, unhurt, before flashes of her hallucinations came back to her. She gave a small scream, reaching for her forehead, but there was no Dalek now, no asylum — instead, a soft cushion, a couch, and sitting across from her—

‘Clara, it’s fine, you’re safe.’ There was a reserved quality to his voice that she didn’t much like.

‘How— where are we?’

‘The library. The TARDIS is safe, we’re back in your flat, you’ve hardly been gone.’ It was then that she noticed her own blanket draped over her. He must have left to get it — must have noticed the sorry state that her flat was in.

‘Why… what happened? All I remember…’ As she spoke, she tried to get up, but the Doctor cut across her before she could finish.

‘Don’t, just try to relax, you need rest.’ There was a great deal of fear and anxiety in his eyes, even now, in their relative safety. Clara couldn’t bring herself to worry about why he could be here — she knew it could only be the real him, and she had a feeling he was about to explain anyway.

‘It was inside, I could feel it, and it was starting to get to you, Clara, you were shouting, you were… delusional,’ he finished, carefully avoiding her eyes. ‘And then you blacked out, I couldn’t wake you, and I knew you didn’t have long, so I hooked you up to the TARDIS, the telepathic link, and I had her project a different image into your head. She shielded you, she made you think you were back home, safe, that’s half the reason we ended up here. After that, after it was destroyed, I carried you up here. You’ve been asleep for a few hours.’ Clara remembered, now, vague images of her flat, her bedroom, soft and dreamlike. The Doctor hadn’t appeared anywhere.

‘What was it? Why did I react like that?’

‘They drag out painful memories. The more you think about them, the more they can dig their way through your brain, until — until it’s been consumed.’ He wouldn’t meet her eyes, and Clara decided she could have done without knowing what it was. 

As if her week hadn’t been bad enough. Even some of her kids had begun to notice the shadows under her eyes. But how could she explain that the reason she hadn’t marked any work was because an alien had failed to rescue another version of herself, trapped inside another alien?

‘You carried me all the way up here?’

‘You’re not very heavy. And the TARDIS shifted a few rooms around, we’re only down the corridor.’ He looked as though he were bursting to say something else. She knew what must be coming now, and closed her eyes in preparation.

‘Clara, please… just tell me what’s wrong. Let me help you.’

‘You can’t,’ she croaked.

‘I want to.’ She stared at him for a while. Telling him would, without a doubt, pile guilt onto him, but at the same time, she had to tell _someone_. No one else would understand, and the Doctor — the _other_ Doctor — had already been gone a week. 

‘I’ve been having nightmares. Ever since I jumped through your time stream. Those echoes… they’re not me, and it’s not like I remember everything that happened to each of them, but I can feel them, sometimes. Dreams, especially. But Oswin is the worst. She was so scared of becoming one of them, of losing everything about being human, and you finally noticed her and you still couldn’t save her… sometimes I think _I’ve_ become a Dalek. That I’m there, chained up in my own head. I haven’t slept in days.’ Her voice cracked, and she stopped, meeting the Doctor’s gaze and trying to apologise for her own fear. He was watching her with so much concern that it hurt to realise how much he cared. This was no trick, but simply a painful mistake.

*

‘Clara, I—’ 

He had no idea what he was going to say. She had sacrificed so much to save him, back on Trenzalore, and he’d suspected there would be lasting damage, but the fact that there was little he could do floored him.

‘Stop. It’s not your fault, Doctor, they’re just dreams.’ But there was, of course, something else bothering her, he knew that now.

‘And what about what you said… I don’t know if you remember. Just before you passed out.’ 

He didn’t want to repeat it.

Was it really possible he’d died? It seemed that way, and yet… Clara had also shouted that he’d regenerated. Another near impossibility — the Doctor had suspected for a very long time that his number was, quite literally, up. She might really have just been delusional. Hysterical. But she was crying now, and her flat was uncharacteristically messy — which could be explained by grief. 

Between sobs, he could hear her talking now.

‘Doctor, please. Please…’

Unsure of how he was going to handle this — tears were never easy — he got up, edging nearer to the couch she was curled up on. When she didn’t try to push him away, he sat down beside her, slipping an arm over her shoulders. Clara turned to cry on him instead, clinging to his jacket as though trying to anchor herself in reality.

He didn’t know how long they’d been sitting there, but Clara had stopped crying, apparently asleep, and tears of his own had dried on his cheeks. Seeing her in so much distress was agony. His friends gave so much for him, but what was the point, if they lost themselves in the process?

Before he could stop himself, he leaned down, intending to press his lips to her forehead. As though sensing his movements, however, she looked up from his chest, and his lips met hers instead. He straightened up again, as though electrocuted, his eyes wide.

‘I didn’t, I’m sorry, I—’ He faltered at the look on her face. Her eyes were no longer watery, but hard, blazing. Was she angry?

‘I’m never going to see you again.’

‘Don’t — I know what you said, and the less I know about my future, the better.’

‘No, I just mean — I’m never going to get another chance.’ He frowned, confused, but she reached up to guide his head down, kissing him again. And instead of pulling away, or speaking, he kissed her back, trying to explain without words what she meant to him. He knew they both understood that it could never happen, that they had always understood, but also that their feelings for each seemed to surpass simply ‘love’. She was an essential part of his existence.

*

She pulled away first, taking a deep breath and looking up at him.

‘Told you it was a snogbox.’

‘Hey!’

‘What? It’s true. Not saying it’s a bad thing.’ There was a long pause before the Doctor spoke again.

‘Are you going to be alright?’

‘Of course. You didn’t think we’d be able to do this forever, did you? That’s what makes it special. Wednesdays, with you, in the TARDIS, it’s been great. But this is the last one – my last one. You, on the other hand, just you wait. Months of adventure ahead.’ A genuine smile crossed her face, for the first time in days. 

‘It doesn’t have to be the last one.’

‘Yes it does, and it’s no good giving me those big, sad eyes, Doctor, we can’t change it, not without me telling you what happened, and we _really_ can’t do that.’

Clara knew how he felt about goodbyes. But she couldn’t explain that this _wasn’t_ a goodbye, either.

‘Come on, one more adventure, we haven’t finished yet. Show me something brilliant, Doctor.’

 

**Author's Note:**

> Might continue this on into the actual adventure itself — who knows.


End file.
